The Devils and the Saints

Let me introduce you to one of the saddest videos I’ve ever seen. It starts off as a press conference. Iker Casillas speaks a language you might not understand, on behalf of a team you might not support. Over the course of two minutes, it is stripped – of formalities, of rivalry, of audience, of money – until you are left with a man, a cracked voice, a broken heart.

Twenty five years ago Casillas arrived at the Santiago Bernabeu, held up a scarf, took a picture. San Iker, the fans call him, Saint Iker, and he matched their devotion with his own. There are few men of his ilk in the football landscape today. In English football it would probably be Ryan Giggs with Manchester United. To think of them requires thinking of the shirt that they wore, and vice versa. But whereas Giggs was applauded off the pitch, seventy five thousand fans chanting his name, Casillas faced an empty stadium for his final goodbye. No teammates. No club officials. Only a piece of paper upon which he thanked, ironically, the ‘great institution’ that had turned his back on him. Real Madrid unfollowed him on social media less than a day after the conference, as if he wasn’t Real Madrid himself, but some half useful player who should consider himself lucky to say ‘I played for Madrid once’.

Therein lies the black mark on the erstwhile fairy tale. Retiring players leave on their own terms, even transferring players get wonderful send-offs, but Casillas is being barred even that honour. Watch the conference again, and again, if you must. That is not the picture of a man who wants to leave. Perhaps his performances of late have declined, but 725 senior games, five league titles, three champions leagues, and the Captain’s armband tell you he has more than earned his right to go when he chooses. Except he has been stripped of this, is instead given acrimony and a room of half-hearted reporters clapping because there is no one else to do so.

This is not the way it should be. No fan should have to watch their legend be pushed out of their club like a crumpled piece of paper tossed into a bin. By doing that Perez has taken away the very meaning of sport, is destroying the very idea of football. People lament the scarcity of one-club men these days, yet here he is making sure they remain scarce. And ruining other clubs in the process, taking their best players and putting them on his pretty bench. Iker Casillas Leaves Real Madrid, go the headlines, but they might as well have read Football Is Dying. Agents hold ransom, players demand exorbitance, fans turn, teams encourage disrespect.

But maybe Saint Iker will save us once again. Because, even as he leaves, he reminds us what it means to be a footballer. What it means to play. ‘Wherever I go,’ he says in the end, ‘I will keep shouting “¡Hala Madrid!”’ Even as he boards a plane to Portugal, he remains: ‘I won’t say goodbye because we shall meet here again soon.’

That is sport, whether you shout Hala Madrid, or Glory Glory Man United, or Mia San Mia. Only sport can make you cry like that, and it’s both terrible and beautiful, and we must remember why. It’s a hundred raw emotions that fill you with an infinite sense of being and belonging. It’s love, sheer unconditional unadulterated love for your team no matter what they do to you. It’s a little boy twenty five years ago, looking up at the shadow of the Santiago Bernabeu, thinking to himself, one day I will wear the number one shirt. One day all my dreams will come true.

Spoil-Sports

In a style reminiscent of Barcelona and Istanbul, Real Madrid came from behind to overwhelm a defiant Atletico and claim their 10th Champions’ League trophy. The 4-1 scoreline belies the actual harrowing experience of being a Real fan for the length of the match, as their team missed chance after chance and seemed destined to miss out on La Decima as well.

One would not, however, have been under any illusions as to Real’s hard-fought comeback had they (instead of the highlights) been watching the reactions of one man. Although there was much celebrating that night all around the world – fireworks in Brazil, half-drunk uncles screaming in Singapore – it was Xabi Alonso’s celebrations which took the cake (and all the cakes in the world available for taking).

Nine years ago Alonso scored the equivalent of Sergio Ramos’s header, firing in a rebound to bring the game to penalties. That night, as even non-Liverpool fans know, he celebrated by cementing Gerlonso into the hearts of millions of fangirls. In Lisbon as a spectator – whose emotions, free from the calm and pressure that actually playing in the game necessitates – it was no surprise that he managed to one up 2005 by

a) nearly hugging a teammate to death after a Bale miss,

b) headbanging after Marcelo’s goal,

 

c) and, most importantly and memorably, jumping over a railing and sprinting (in a suit) down the touchline to celebrate the winning goal.

 

Personally, Real Madrid is a distant second to Manchester United, and I follow it mainly because of the existence of Xabi Alonso. But if I had been in Alonso’s place I would have done exactly the same thing. (Perhaps not as classily, and perhaps my lack of athletic prowess would have left me unable to get over the railing, but still.) And so would any football supporter there, if it had been your club winning the biggest trophy possible for a club to win.

A gifset of Alonso’s reactions has garnered 4000 notes on tumblr – and although Alonso usually gets a lot of notes given his impossibly good looks, that number far surpasses most things I’ve seen in the football fandom. United fans were reblogging it. People who disliked Real Madrid were reblogging it. Why? Because in that moment, Xabi Alonso was us. He did exactly what we would have done and still do. The King of Cool totally and completely lost it, yet it wasn’t comical so much as it was meaningful, because he spoke for the emotions of fans around the world.

Which makes it all the more ridiculous why UEFA have decided to charge him for it.

Among the charges pressed against various parties post-final is Alonso having breached the ‘general principles of conduct’. It seems that UEFA thinks Alonso’s celebrations as having crossed some line of decency – never mind the raucous alcohol-fueled partying that went on long after the final whistle was blown. To that end, I would say that UEFA are in all possible senses of the word spoilsports.

The wonderful, wonderful thing about football is the celebration, the feeling of being so on top of the world that you can jump and shout and scream your heart out and no one will judge you for it. Watching your team win, even from thousands of miles away, even if you’re the only one awake at 3am plagued by pixels and pauses of your tiny computer screen, is the best feeling I will ever be able to imagine. Watching them secure a magnificent, historic comeback in the stadium itself must be a thousand times better. Such feelings must be expressed, and indeed the beauty of football comes from expressing them.

Alonso’s celebrations aren’t even the most ridiculous things to have come from footballers. Yet by fining him, UEFA has elected to kill off emotion. They are telling us that celebrating that way is no way to celebrate, and that we ought to confine (ahem) our happiness to clapping in the stands, leaving only the players in the match able to group hug. It’s as if you finally got that dream job, as well as the keys to your new house and your new car; but if you so much as scream with happiness, embarrassing only yourself and in fact serving as a source of amusement to passersby, the police are going to find you and handcuff you. Emotions, apparently, are signs of weakness and a breach of general conduct. They must never be allowed in the open, otherwise your man-card will be taken away.

Ridiculous. In fact I would be more likely to fine Alonso if he hadn’t jumped out of the stands and emulated Usain Bolt. It’s not like he damaged any public property, and it’s not like he swung a fist into a bystander’s face on the way down to the mosh pit. This statement implies that UEFA takes ‘breaches of conduct’ about as seriously as rough play and verbal/physical assault. That they have nothing better to do than to call out a player for celebrating with his team. Seriously, what is up with that, UEFA?

Of course it can be argued that Xabi Alonso is a football player, and football players should be held to a higher standard than normal people. They have to follow all the rules, including not being able to go onto the pitch when suspended (even when the match is almost over, they weren’t actually participating in gameplay, and are rightfully euphoric). They shouldn’t, say, hump the rival fans and kiss their teammates (to mention someone else entirely). But football players are people too. In fact, football players are often the biggest fans of the club they play for. Gary Neville – the aforementioned player – is a notorious die-hard and the things he says leave his love for Manchester United to no imagination. Admittedly, humping rival fans might be some way across the line, but is it so wrong to begrudge people of more innocuous celebrations?

No, I don’t think so. I think that UEFA should leave the art of celebrating to people who actually care about football. No one I know is taking the charges seriously and it honestly isn’t a charge that should be taken seriously. Pride and passion are part of football, and if UEFA can’t understand that, then they’re just spoiling sports.

The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of

If there is one quote that is able to sum up the twists and turns and drama of football, it belongs to Sir Alex Ferguson. After his side’s stunning 2-1 win over Bayern Munich, he could only muster up: ‘I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. Football, bloody hell.”

The Champions’ League final has been an arena for disbelief many times: the unbelievable last three minutes of 1999 Barcelona, the stunning 2005 comeback in Istanbul, and now the generous 4-1 scoreline that belies the nail-biting finish to the almost-missed La Decima of Real Madrid. If there is one thing I have learnt about football, it’s that you can never stop watching until the game is over. Football is a game of miracles, more so than anything else in the world. You never know when Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is going to seal the treble in the dying minutes, or expect your team to claw up from 3-0 down against an excellent side to eventually win on penalties. Ramos rising to the occasion (literally) in the 90+3 minute, and the floodgate of goals which followed; what an emotional roller-coaster.

Of course, it’s no fun for the fans at the losing end. It’s cruel to be so near on the brink of history only to have it snatched away from you. I feel for the Atletico fans, because watching your team win the Champions League is (to both Iker Casillas and me) better than winning the World Cup; to have it snatched away just when you think you might explode from the happiness is an awful, awful feeling. I watched Fulham score an injury-time equaliser against United – not even a final, not even a loss – and it was already heartbreaking. I can’t imagine what it would be like for the losing side of a Champions’ League final, not least one that is wrenched away.

But no matter how sorry you feel for the opposing team, you will feel twice as good for the supporters of the champions. Because they were the ones who stuck with the team, who didn’t give up, who waited and watched and raised their eyes to the sky and prayed. I’m a Manchester United fan, which should adequately convey my thoughts regarding Liverpool – and yet when I watched the youtube videos of the Liverpool fans in Istanbul 3-0 down singing You’ll Never Walk Alone at half time, I cried. The way they sang that song was like a prayer, and the deep-seated passion ingrained in the words is something every football fan can relate to. I couldn’t begrudge them their win and I doubt many Milan fans could either. This was what they believed in, a miracle they were willing with their hearts to happen, and it did, and there is something so beautiful about that.

The hush as Alonso stepped up to take his penalty, and the wild screaming after, knowing that they had equalised from three nil down, knowing that suddenly it didn’t matter what happened after that because this game and the world were wide open. United players streaming onto the pitch to envelope Solskjaer, whose own baby-face beamed so brightly, like all of his wishes had just come true (and they had). Alonso again nine years later bounding right over the railing, racing down the touchline, his emotions impossible to contain; Casillas dissolving into tears on the pitch. There can be no script written better, and indeed no script more perfect, than watching the sheer, unadulterated joy of these players and of these fans.

People spend their whole lives being told that anything can happen and that they can be anyone they want to be. More often than not this is not the case, and they are shunted into nine to five office jobs, reduced to dreaming of an escape. Well, in football, anything can happen. Maybe that’s why millions of people around the world watch it; because in that great ground, on that green pitch, right there is where miracles are made. Right there is the stuff dreams are made of.

It’s quite impossible to describe the intense multitude of feelings that you get, watching a live game, to say nothing of whether you win or lose. There’s nothing like it in the world. It can go up or down in a matter of seconds; you can be ten-nil up and still expect to lose, still have your heart in your mouth.

And just when you think that the game is all but over, something slips up and you’re jumping out of your chair screaming and crying like there’s no tomorrow. And you will be going ‘I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it’, because how could this have happened? how could a game turn around so fast? but it can, and it has, and football, bloody hell. There’s nothing like it. Nothing like it in the world.